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New Year's Eve in Key West

The island of Key West offers abundant New Year's Eve frolics and frivolity.

Key West, FL

New York has the Ball Drop in Time's Square, Atlanta the Peach Drop at Underground Atlanta... but leave it to Key West to do it just right in several entertaining ways... a conch shell drop at Sloppy Joe’s Bar… the Red High Heel Drop with drag queen Sushi at Bourbon St. Pub/New Orleans House and… Schooner Wharf Bar lowers a “Pirate Wench” from the mast of the Schooner Liberty Clipper, accompanied with a cannon blast to be sure!

The island starts to tilt a bit with the amount of people who gather in front of the Bourbon St. Pub & the New Orleans House on Duval Street to ring in the new year as the world famous drag queen Sushi is lowered in a huge red high heel shoe from the top of the New Orleans House to the ground at the stroke of midnight.

There is no place better than key west to ring the new year in! Duval Street is closed to traffic which allows the tens of thousands of party goers to celebrate and the weather is warm and dry!

Sloppy Joe's will host its 24th Annual Dropping of the Conch Shell. Anything goes New Year's Eve in Key West on Duval Street. You'll find people all decked out for the midnight celebration, and folks still in their bathing suits and flip flops when the Conch Shell drops from the roof of Sloppy Joe's Bar.

The idea and implementation of the New Year's Eve Dropping of the Conch Shell is that of local artist Tobias McGregor. In 1993, McGregor approach Sloppy Joe's management about the New Year's Eve plan. "Before the dropping of the Conch Shell, everyone would just wonder around Duval Street, celebrating the New Year when their watches read midnight. The crowd was just not in sync," said McGregor.

The initial Conch Shell was rigged on a frame, the shell was lowered manually, and timed by watch, or by looking across the street into a window and watching the count down in Times Square on someone's TV. McGregor said, "the Queen Conch has come along way since the early years, and the crowd at the corner of Duval and Greene expects more each year."

The crowd starts to gather on the street around 10:00pm as Sloppy Joe's rooftop host entertains the crowd and everyone dances, catches beads and waits for the count down clock to begin. As midnight strikes and the Conch Shell is lowered confetti, streamers and lights will fill the sky.